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Weather

As mudslide threat expires, residents return

Enlarge ImageRequest to buy this photoLos Angeles County Sheriff’s DepartmentMalibu search and rescue team members plan a mission to save four hikers who became trapped by rising water in a remote area of Malibu Creek State Park, Calif. The hikers were not injured.

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Monday March 3, 2014 7:51 AM

LOS ANGELES — Residents of three California foothill communities headed home yesterday after a
powerful storm that threatened to unleash mud on neighborhoods beneath unstable hills scarred by
recent wildfires.

With the storm reduced to sprinkles, residents in the Los Angeles County cities of Glendora and
Azusa were allowed back into their homes.

Monrovia residents were allowed back late Saturday, officials said.

The storm — the largest since 2010 — kept emergency planners and rescue crews busy, but it didn’t
produce enough rain to pull California out of a crippling drought that has grown to crisis
proportions for the state’s vast farming industry.

The precipitation will bring the Los Angeles region to about half its normal rainfall for the
season, Bill Patzert, a climatologist for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge,
told the
Los Angeles Times.

“This is no drought-buster, but it’s a nice, fat down payment” in the water bank, he said.

In downtown Los Angeles, the skies cleared in time for the red-carpet arrivals at the Academy
Awards, but rescue teams and cleanup crews were still busy.

A swift water-rescue team plucked four hikers from rising water in a risky overnight rescue
yesterday in Malibu.

The hikers, who were trapped between a high wall and the fast-moving water in Malibu Creek State
Park, were whisked out by helicopter uninjured but cold.

In San Diego County, search and rescue teams discovered the body of a 55-year-old man whose
kayak was found upside down Saturday at Lake Sutherland Dam in Ramona.

The man, whose name has yet to be released, was found dead about 10 a.m. Sunday, said sheriff’s
Lt. Jason Vickery.

High surf breached a sand berm in Long Beach late Saturday during an usually high tide, said
Will Nash, a spokesman for the Long Beach Fire Department.

The water caused minor damage in the parking garages and lower levels of about 20 homes, he
said.

As of Saturday evening, the storm had dropped more than 3 inches of rain in downtown Los
Angeles, almost 4.5 inches in Van Nuys and about 12 inches at Cogswell Dam in the Angeles National
Forest, the National Weather Service said.

The storm wasn’t all bad news, though.

Ski resorts were delighted with fresh snow that promised to extend their season and, in northern
California, the rain boosted a local creek where endangered coho salmon spawn.

Rainfall during the past 30 days has helped facilitate the salmon’s return to their spawning
grounds, said area water-district officials who track their numbers.

Eric Ettlinger, an aquatic ecologist with the Marin Municipal Water District, told
The Marin Independent Journal that the recent rains are a positive sign for the
salmon.

“Coho season is wrapping up,” he said, “and thankfully it’s ending with more of a bang than a
whimper.”